The semiconductor manufacturing industry has experienced exponential growth over the last few decades. In the course of semiconductor evolution, the minimum feature sizes for semiconductor devices has decreased over time, thereby helping to increase the number of semi-conductor devices per unit area on successive generations of integrated circuits (ICs). This device “shrinkage” allows engineers to pack more devices and more corresponding functionality onto newer generations of ICs, and is consequently one of the underlying drivers of the modern digital age. Another advancement that has helped improve the functionality of ICs has been to replace traditional polysilicon gates with metal gates, and to replace traditional silicon dioxide gate dielectrics with so called high-K dielectrics. Whereas silicon dioxide has a dielectric constant of approximately 3.9, high-K dielectrics have a dielectric constant of more than 3.9, which helps to reduce gate leakage and allows faster switching for transistors.